NAIROBI — Somali pirates released a British couple yesterday, more than a year after gunmen kidnapped them aboard their yacht near the Seychelles islands.

Paul and Rachel Chandler were handed to officials in a central Somali town after a ransom was paid. They were flown to the capital, Mogadishu, to meet the Somali prime minister and then to neighboring Kenya.

“We are fine, rather skinny and bony, but we are fine,” Paul Chandler, 60, told BBC television.